If they’re right? Hundreds, thousands saved. If they’re wrong? I got to travel the countryside to somewhere I’ve not been. Might even chance upon people who need help in other ways, too.
When the seers were wrong, they were usually wrong about the magnitude of a threat — not the existence of one. So I view these longer expeditions as a guarantee they’ll be right, even if accidentally. The odds that I don’t run into something in six weeks of travel are virtually nil. As such, it’s a net gain to the world one way or the other.
And, at the very least. It’s a pleasant walk.
But today the walk should be coming to an end, or…a break, rather. Walking through these rolling hills, I can see my destination in the far distance, nestled amongst a field quarries is my quarry. “Hm.” I let out a small chuckle at the wordplay, accidental though it may have been. The settlement is a fortified town — a place that was settled irrespective of the danger because of access to unnaturally high essence density or a unique resource of some stripe. In the case of ”Brickton” that was a wealth of Structura essence in the region. Which has led to a thriving masonry industry.
I’ve heard that, despite the woefully uncreative town name, the people here are amongst the best artisans in the kingdom of Eldara. Maybe I’ll pick up a trinket. A gift for Lan? He doesn’t need more trinkets, I suppose. Possibly something for the children the last Calamity left behind? That would work. The little raven-furred lapine girl hasn’t smiled since she was rescued; maybe a gift will help? I will be able to bring back a lot, actually, with this new “Carry-All” pack. Perhaps the people of the town will even gift something if I wind up being needed.
No matter, though. That’s for afterward — now that I’m in the area of the event, I need to be on my guard, especially with the sunset coming. These things tended to happen in the evenings but the Blackthorns had yet to discover a reason for the correlation. Might be nothing, might be something. It’s for smarter heads than mine.
With a yawn, I focus, calling a bit of Terra essence to my beck and will it to imbue my body, helping stave off the coming fatigue and to bolster my attentiveness. It’s a general-purpose imbuement I could manage with most-any type of essence, but Terra is far and away my best affinity. And it tended to be my default — even more so in this region so inundated with it.
As my senses sharpen under the enchanting effects of my essence, I catch something on the wind. Shouts? I stop and don my helmet — a featureless black thing with very few visible plated segments, looking almost like it was cast out of a single piece of metal. The helmets basic enchantment suite kicks in, rendering the visor-less helmet transparent and sealing it against my gorget. As a secondary effect, it also amplifies sounds and sight while worn.
“You’ll draw the beast here! Get gone before we make you!”
“We’re only asking for shelter for a single night within the walls.”
“And you’ve got your answer, hellion.”
The words come with increasing clarity and I feel a comfortable scowl settling over my face. I’ve never been able to abide these kinds of things. We live in a world with intelligent monsters that will stalk and kill an entire family for no other reason other than being able to do it. Our order is a testament to those threats and how dire they can be. Yet still, ignorance pervades some regions of the country. Disgusting.
I decide to jog, moving from my sedate, but steady, walking pace to a more, admittedly, ponderous bounce. My frame carries a lot of weight all by itself, but adding my personalized Bulwark armor in the mix makes me almost impractically heavy by most standards. If I hadn’t had my long decades of essence enhancement and physical training it wouldn’t be tenable, but luckily I’d been doing this since I could walk. And now I could run. Or, jog, at least.
In short order I come in sight of the fortified stone walls of Brickton as the sun falls over the horizon. Still the better part of a mile out from the gates, though. However, between my own Aero-enhanced senses and the armors further fortification I can pick out the sight fairly easily. Much to my chagrin, it is exactly what I expected to see. A family of demonkyn at the entrance to the town as night falls. Three of them, A simply attired male of about seven feet tall and looking road-worn and nearly emaciated with pale skin and paler upswept horns. A gray-robed female of nearing eight feet with red-nearing-pink skin and downturned horns looking not much better than the man. And behind them both a small girl well fed and in good condition, cowering amongst what I assume to be her mothers robes. Skin as pale as the orderly moon above and with barely any signs of her heritage beyond her association with her parents.
I pick up the pace, calling and pouring more essence into my armor and legs. It wouldn’t do to arrive after something had kicked off that I could have put a stop to. As I get into a proper run, I keep my eyes on the “discussion” and see it getting more tense, but no weapons have been drawn on either side so I’m not too worried. Ignorance doesn’t equate to cold-blooded murder, usually.
But, when I’m about few hundred yards out the father spins around and faces the forest opposite the gate calling to hand a ball of coherent flame that paints the surrounding area in an angry, flickering, blue light. Shouts from atop the wall as bows are drawn and firearms are leveled. My heart peaks, filling my ears with thunder in anticipation. I can’t see what’s coming from my vantage point but whatever it is it's assuredly going to beat me there.
The mother very calmly takes off her robe, revealing a set of worn and well-loved but gleaming golden scalemail sheathing a taut, muscular, body beneath. She turns and ushers the little girl to the gate with a few sharp words in a foreign tongue, handing her the robe as she does. She turns and stands beside the father at the moment that the worst this otherwise blessed world has to offer comes tearing out of the forest at a full run. I note she has no visible weapons, but is armored like a fighter. Confident or stupid? Time will tell.
It is a terrible amalgam of monsters, all cast in a mocking facsimile of purple crystal and leaking glowing violet ichor. Each of them are unique in their own terrible ways based on what they’ve managed to consume since awakening. I run through its features in my mind, taking stock of likely abilities
Its head looks akin to a pyrite drake — breath weapon, acid.
Its claws look like a terror-birds talons — armor rending
The lower body is comprised of too many legs, most of them digitigrade — leaper
Its eyes glow with an inner white light — likely Structura essence, nearly impenetrable hide.
A volley from the wall opens up with shot, bolt, and arrow. A few scattered, simple, projectile spells streak out behind them, having been more carefully aimed. The ranged weapons all bounce off of it ineffectually but I see one spell strike home, seeming to bypass its defenses entirely. A simple, humble, icebolt. Each other spell is absorbed and sent sailing back at the caster with amplified force with a casual gesture from the beast. Except the icebolt.
Weakness: Hydrus
I note coldly as I do the mental math — there is no way I make it there in time to save the parents out front. They will live or die on their own merits. The girl, however, will not be dying tonight and should the parents die it won’t have been in vain.
I call massed aero essence — the essence most tied to movement, agility, and motion — and begin to shape it into a simple spell. Simple, but powerful from the amount of essence I feed it.
As I plant my foot one last time, I brace and release the spell. The essence races through my mouth in an exhale and through grates in my armor to quickly pool around my feet where it solidifies beneath me and concentrates into a dense disc. The moment I step from the disc and make to leap, it bursts and a column of solid aero essence pushes hard against my weight on a forward vector, launching me slightly skyward, but with mostly forward momentum at the same time it lightens my body.
The parents don't rush to meet the Calamity, instead they split apart after a brief touch and a look, going opposite directions while the father throws bolt after searing bolt at the thing, catching it repeatedly in the side of its head. Each bolt looks tighter and more concentrated than the last and even from this distance, in this chill night air, I can see steam starting to pour off of his body. He’s not planning to walk away from the fight, it seems — invoking far more essence than will be survivable without external aid. Each bolt, though, is doing more damage, and he is outpacing the now chasing beast as the secondary effects of his overuse of Ignia essence push his body well beyond normal limits.
Each time my motion slows at the apex of a stride, I loose another spell, building speed with a series of rolling thunderclaps being left behind me. I stay as close to the ground as possible. Too much upward motion will waste energy for no advantage. As I’m getting within about a hundred feet, the man's luck runs out, and he is scooped up onto the taloned hands of the Calamity. I see him calling ever more Ignia, his intentions very clear to anyone who knows how advanced Ignia overuse ends. His once pale skin begins to crack and sear as more and more of his bodies natural essence is replaced with the essence of heat, fire, passion, and personal strength.
“Going elemental” as it was known amongst soldiery I’ve fought alongside, is a one-way trip that will vary in outcome depending on the essence being overused. Drawing upon the wealth of power of the world to cast more spells, empower your body more, or…In the case of Ignia, it’s what’s referred to as “Soulfire”. The vital spark at the core of a mortal is finally set aflame by the overwhelming presence of Ignia. It’s typically like a high-yield bomb going off, which is why he’d been leading the thing away from not just his daughter, but the town that so coldly turned him away.
But…that is not what happens when someone is grabbed by a Calamity. Its hands are death and worse. The overwhelming and lethal energies building in the mans body all dim at once as he goes limp in the hands of the beast. “Consumption” we call it. The Calamity’s main tool. It drains essence and knowledge from anything it touches to the point of aetheric collapse. The man's heroic sacrifice ends not with a surely lethal explosion. It instead ends with his body collapsing into entirely essence-devoid, stark white, dust at the same time that the Calamity’s skin cracks open like magma from the mouth of a volcano. The light behind its eyes shifts to the particular shade of red associated with Ignia and I see ash and brimstone flicking out between its teeth.
The poor hero couldn’t have known his final act would empower the thing that took his life. But it wouldn’t be in vain. He bought time and that’s what he needed to do.
Along my path, I continue to call essence, compressing it into a more complicated spell while a lesser bit of my mind focuses on my bread-and-butter spells. Still airborne, I loose the spell as the Calamity spins around to look at the gate. No…it looks at the girl. Some vestige of the man's memories, likely identifying her as important guiding the monster. And “important” to a calamity means “a valuable power source”. Not going to be happening.
The spell forms in my core at the apex of a final leap as I draw Bane. One of the Order of the Eternal Vigil’s most potent relics entrusted to me as one of the few Slayers in the order. It was an oversized breaker blade, wide, flat, and with a single edge. The reverse face of the blade has inward-facing teeth that are meant for tearing more than cutting. I intend to use those.
The spell activates, catapulting me directly at the monster as I brace my weapon for the impact. The secondary benefits improve my reaction times and generally harden my armor and body in preparation for the fight, and I think only one of us is prepared for this fight.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I collide with the side of the calamity as it starts to lope towards the gate with all of the inevitability of a landslide, meeting it with my more reinforced right shoulder and bowling it over onto its side. The thing outweighs me ten times over, and stands a little over half again my height at about fifteen feet at full extension, but it matters very little for this impact. Mass and force are more deadly than any explosion, and I feel the things toughened hide crack under the impact.
My body goes out of phase as the collision comes to an end, allowing me to carry on through the thing to its opposite side where it won’t be expecting an attack. I dispel the effect the moment I’m “outside” of the monster, spinning and planting my feet wide. I swing Bane in a great arc with its ripping teeth forward at one of its thicker forelimbs. The creature's just coming to its feet again as Bane bites. There’s a sickening crunch as exoskeletal carapace shatters to reveal his softer undersides which are immediately ripped and shredded as the blade cleaves through, messily severing the limb at the same time that purple essence is drained from the monster and into the blade. I watch as that limb drains of color until it too, collapses into a white powder at my blades tender ministrations. The Calamity lets out an awful screech that my armor dampens, but others around aren’t as lucky, grabbing at their ears as the banshee screech cloys at their minds. Spell-like abilities of a banshee — reduced efficacy, likely an early acquisition. I fade after the strike, backing away a few hopping steps. Out of the corner of my helmet's extended field of view(A gods-blessed enchantment, one of the most useful in the armor), I see a swipe coming in from one of its rear legs and manage to bring Bane into a defensive guard the instant before the hit lands.
I won’t say I “blocked” the blow. It’s a simple fact of relative weight and mass that the thing that weighs ten times as much hitting the thing that doesn’t weigh ten times as much gets the privilege of making the smaller thing go away. As such, despite “blocking” the blow, I’m sent careening through the air to slam into a distant tree, snapping it in two about halfway up its trunk as I drop the remaining fifteen feet to the ground. All three hits see runic indicators on my helmet wink out and I feel one of the segmented plates in my midsection digging in at an awful angle. I grab the edge of the plate while still lying on the ground and wrench it free, relieving that pressure as I hop back onto my feet with a burst of aero essence. I feel my side dampen with the plates removal, but that's a concern for minutes from now — not seconds. The thing, however, does not pursue me as I expected. It immediately spins to make for the gate and faster than I could catch it. I’m in motion as I make the realization, knowing it’s futile but needing to try anyway. Every minute, every second, is a life.
However, as I ready to skystride once more, preparing to take the risk of suffering aero poisoning and rendering my body more frail, there’s a flash of light like a bolt from the blue. The energy is unlike anything I’ve seen before — which is usually concerning since there are preciously few things in the world that qualify for that at my age.
Where the Calamity had been moving to menace the little girl, its head is instead snapped to the side from a bone-shattering blow from…the demonkyn woman. Her armor is glowing…No, not quite. The armor itself is seemingly made of light, a raiment of translucent golden essence. Her entire body is wreathed in the bizarre essence and when the creature recovers and aims a taloned swipe at the woman. She braces the moment before impact, catching the claw that should have bisected her in both hands and getting forced back ten feet by the force of the blow. She keeps hold though, and in a swift open-handed strike she brings her hand down at its wrist joint — a golden blade manifesting along her arm as she does.
It severs through its monstrous carapace like a hot knife through butter. In spite of myself and the situation, I am utterly gobsmacked. All I can do is stare. There’s a couple things she might be or be doing, but… There’s another stone-shattering crack that fills the air as she aims an axe kick onto the calamity’s other thick forelimb, leaving it a bloody mess as her heel passes through it with the surety of a headsman's axe.
The creature recoils and starts to build Ignia within its body, stepping backwards away from the now-golden-skinned woman with obvious reticence. Its body is already knitting itself together again as it makes this play for time. The woman looks over her shoulder and at the cowering girl and barks something in that foreign tongue. I see motes of essence leave her mouth and streak towards the girl, who instantly stands and breaks into a run as fast as her little legs can carry her in the opposite direction of her mother — directly at me. “That can’t be an accident.”
I look closer at the woman and see that whatever she’s doing is not leaving her unscathed. I see sections of her arms and legs that have bare muscle visible where skin must have torn from the force of her blows. The Calamity continues to backpedal, growing brighter and brighter red as it does. Intending to use the man's last tactic as an attack that it will surely survive due to its ability to absorb and process essence. They are spiteful creatures though, so it may well be an act of desperation to ensure its foe goes with it.
The woman sees it too and looks directly at me, making a “shoo” motion towards her daughter as she braces herself. The calamity’s body is starting to discorporate as it replaces considerable amounts of its mass with Ignia, jets of flame and waves of heat spurt from its carapace. I read the room finally breaking from my stupor, and dash for the girl with all of my might. She looks up at me with terror in her deep, red, eyes, “Sorry little one, I promise I’m a friend.” I slide and scoop her into my arms, rising back up to run with steps lightened by my sustained aero exposure during the fight, trying to create as much distance as possible, refusing to let both parents die in vain. “This girl will survive if it’s the last act of my life.”
I look back over my shoulder as the little girl punches and kicks at me, demanding I let her go in broken common, but I see something different happen. The woman streaks forward, each step leaving behind blurs that vaguely resemble her dashing form as she closes the gap in an eyeblink. She arrives beneath the erupting calamity with the golden armor beginning to peel off of her, seemingly shattering under invisible blows. She casts one more glance back at us and I take that to mean that it’s time to hunker down.
I call upon the last bits of essence I can before I run the risk of serious poisoning effects, and channel it once more into a spell of etherealness, but modified.
I put one hand on the girls back and force the essence beyond her bodies natural defenses with nothing but its own power behind it. At the same time, I slide into a kneeling position and wrap her as completely as I can, having her phase ever so slightly into the plate. The spell protects against physical strikes, but not essence-based ones. So the ethereal spell is to stop her from being killed by debris, while I’m to serve as the bulwark against whatever else comes.
Out of my helmets improved sight lines, I see the golden energy bleeding off the woman and coalescing around one hand that she presses to her heart. At the moment of contact, the Calamity final reaches its critical state and bursts.
Too much happens too fast to truly describe it meaningfully. The womans remaining energy burst outward, forming something of a barrier which traps most of the creatures fiery end within an essence barrier of incredible potency. That spell alone would kill me and everyone I know dead on the spot to cast. But it holds against the soulfire for a few seconds while the creature and the woman are both seemingly erased by the roiling orb of raw ignia essence. It does crack, and break — maybe because the woman perished — and when it does, the concentrated force that rolls out and batters my armor is staggering. The little girl, partially inside my armor, is screaming in terror and I would be lying if I said I didn’t join her.
But I watch the runes in my helmet wink out one by one as the firestorm boils around us going down to its last few percent of efficacy before it subsides. All of the armor's enhancement enchantments are dead and fried, overwhelmed by the essence in the air and the damage from the sea of Ignia breaking over us. Turning around, I see that the Calamity is gone, and that it’s explosion wasn’t just contained for a few seconds to buy us time. She turned it. There is a stark and perfectly straight line where not one lick of fire pushed past. Running perpendicular to and protecting the city and everyone inside at the expense of a few thousand feet of forest opposite it which has been disintegrated by the blast. It appears we only just made it to the very edge of the blast. In my stunned silence at the sheer power on display, the girl slips from my grip and goes running towards the epicenter with speed borne of terrified desperation. When I stand to move after her, I see the woman is still there, against all odds, kneeling in a position that looks almost like supplication in prayer. She is little more than burnt tissue though and I try to stop the girl from going any closer but she evades me. With my armor nonfunctional and me so badly battered, I’m more sluggish than usual so she has an easy time of it.
As I approach, I see the woman’s chest moving and a dry hissing coming from her. “By the Watcher and all the Gods in the skies.” I curse in disbelief, fumbling for my phial pouch for a tonic only to feel that every single one either shattered or boiled off in the inferno. I start calling Hydrus — the essence of water, chill, healing, and life — and prepare to imbue her when I arrive, but I see that the effort would be beyond a waste. Her body is starting to collapse away into that golden essence as her daughter hugs her, screaming something over and over again in that foreign tongue.
She abruptly stops and leans in closer, seemingly listening intently. She turns and gestures at me. I move forward mechanically, fully working on muscle memory in the face of so many things that should be impossibilities. When I get close and enough to lean in, she speaks in faltering, broken, common, only getting a few words out, and then only barely.
“Nyssa…you…care?” her dried, golden, eyes communicate such a depth of sorrow that I fail to even open my mouth to answer, I just nod emphatically. It’s all I can do while I try to arrest the tears trying to escape me. She makes a noise that sounds like a confirmation and then whispers a few more things in their tongue.
The little girl vehemently shakes her head, denying the inevitable, but her mother manages to move her arm one last time, managing to pat her head as the rest of her body collapses into gold dust which begins to coalesce into a more coherent energy. The little girl takes a faltering step forward and reaches for the small golden mote before it dissipates. When she wraps her tiny hands around it, there’s a flash of that golden energy and it disappears beneath the girls skin. I watch as it travels through her veins, highlighting her bones and muscles as it travels before settling in her heart and dispersing like all essence would — being carried through blood vessels until total dissolution.
She turns and looks at me with now golden eyes that perfectly match her mothers and throws herself at me, wrapping around my knee as much as her small body allows. I just reach down and gently mirror the last action of her mother — a soft pat and a tousle of her hair. Awkward with hands larger than her head, it seems to calm her down a bit, at least.
I’m grateful for the visorless helmet. Things like this are one of the many reasons I so often am.
Current Day
The person across from me has nacre-gold tears streaming freely down their barklike skin as I reach the end of the first part of my story. Not shuddering, shaking, performative tears. Instead they cry with the sort of quiet solemnity that I would expect from someone visiting the grave of their closest friend. Like hearing the story of Nyssa's parents somehow hurt them deeply and personally.
I find their sorrow stings me just as well. An aura of melancholy pouring off of them that seems to sap the omnipresent music from the air at the same time that the walls of trees around me start to droop and wilt.
I stand from my own stump, take a few steps and kneel next to them, reaching out a hand. Something about the way they carry themselves makes me think of the sort of innocence I would see in a child, and the action comes to me before I really think anything of it.
Surprisingly, they lean into my hand, accepting the offered comfort readily as they look up to me, sapphire eyes piercing through the tears to give me a wan smile.
A hero, true
Kind and soft
But guarded and pained
You tell a tale
But only the beginning
A tragic start to a story that may yet wax and wane
Is this the end of your tale?
Or have you yet more of this wayward soul
so entwined with your own?
Little vines grow from their shoulder, curling around my extended hand and fingers with blooming blue flowers. I watch for a moment, mesmerized by it as I consider.
"I could go on. She's a grown woman now, but I could tell the rest of this specific story until I saw her put into different hands, maybe? It covers a month or so of travelling. I'd probably cut out the boring bits of that, though. I don't think I could manage to keep the weeks of travel interesting."
Very gently, I draw my hand back, letting the vines untangle themselves so I don't tear them. I assume this person is a dryad, so those vines and this grove might be just as much 'them' as the physical body I'm looking at, so I really don't want to injure them with unneeded haste.
They look at me significantly, waiting for me to start without saying anything. The anticipation wrought on their face says more than enough for them, anyways.
I move back and sit, thinking through the next bit to get my thoughts together. As I do, I sense something shift behind me. An essence presence that's almost lost in the wash of power coming off the dryad and from around this grove. Turning, I see a collection of woodland critters sneaking up on me. When I spot them, they all freeze in place and set about putting on a display on nonchalance as they very obviously creep around me in a wide arc to arrive near the dryad and curl up in a loose pile near them. Every set of eyes locks onto me with the same sort of anticipation as the Dryad.
"More fae?" I find myself thinking before the obviousness of the answer slaps me in the face. "Of course it's more fae. I'm in the lands of the fae, and those creatures are obviously intelligent."
I sigh at my own silliness, letting a small smile creep across my face as I settle back in to tell the next most important part. "The next part took place probably an hour after the fight when I was trying desperately to not beat the town guard there senseless." All before me, the audience shows itself to be rapt with attention. It makes it a good bit easier, since this sort of thing has never been my particular sort of thing.